Dusty Mitchell, a Supplementary Biography

Dusty Mitchell, Image via Poptower.

Dusty’s cast in the show as the classic outsider- he’s a public school art teacher in Arkansas, and nobody lives in Arkansas. That said, he’s not entirely naive: he has an MFA, after all, and his work certainly shows some awareness of contemporary art. Lots of his work trades in his own versatility as a sculptor – he has a self-portrait, for instance, made of cereal – and that strength is likely to shine in the try-something-new-but-make-it-your-own challenges Work of Art likes so much.

ART WORLD CRED

Dusty Mitchell’s exhibition record may be dry, but we’re gonna chalk that up to location. He’s shown at the Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, AL, and Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. He had a solo exhibition at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI in 2003.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Reviews on Dusty Mitchell are hard to come by, other than descriptions of his paper-shredding suggestion box (2000), shown at the Brooks Museum, and oversized Lincoln Logs (2008), shown at the Arkansas Arts Center. He’s done a bunch of work with signs, and some Chapman-likework with army men. He earned his BFA in sculpture and art education from Arkansas State University in 2001, and his MFA in sculpture from Michigan State.

Dusty Mitchell, DUSTY, cereal

CHARACTER ASSESSMENT

To look at his work, Dusty could be anyone. Going by the works on his website – a bomb globe, a brick wall, an altered road sign, and the graphic self portrait made of cereal – there’s a certain reticence about his practice that suggests he’s a man of few words; certainly there’s none of the aplomb of Young Sun. On account of his self-described sarcasm and humor, though, which does speak through the objects' oafishness, we suspect there's more than meets the eye. A man of few words, Dusty could coast silently through nine episodes to become the next default champion.